There you go, global and national politics that affect us climbers in visceral ways, deep pockets, climbing access, wars of conquest and sleeping at night.

Cheers
DMT

Basic political issues surrounding rock climbing? Right on, sounds interesting. Here are a few you should definitely include:

1. Iraq has a wonderful climbing area I am told, the Wadi Rum. Access there is somewhat restricted right now, due in no small part, to an invasion of conquest on the part of American forces. We invaded that unfortunate country under false pretenses, knowingly, and are now sucking their oil out of the ground to pay for it all. NOT GOOD FOR CLIMBING.

2. Saudi Arabia is a repressive regime hated equally by it's own citizens and the rest of the Arab World. Yet this same regime holds the keys to half the world's oil reserves. Despite their obvious contribution to 9-11, the Bush Oil Barons want to keep them propped up. The invasion of Iraq was designed in part to do just that. Now this relates to climbers in a fundamental way... the price of gasoline. We should not be propping up brutal, repressive regimes just to keep the price of gas under $2 a gallon, especially when all efforts to to keep it under 2 have failed anyway.

3. President Bush's cronies and the Swift Boat Character Assasination Squad are (this is RICH) attacking Kerry's war record. Bush is ATTACKING Kerry's WAR RECORD!!! That is pretty much the definition of irony. Bush, who was AWOL for the same war, who used Daddy's money to hide from the National Guard and then used Daddy's money to whitewash the AWOL preceedings, and finally used Daddy's money to insure the records are never found. Why is this important to climbers? Because it demonstrates that Bush lacks integrity and cannot be trusted to stand with the truth if the truth conflicts with his personal survival. It is a measure of the man, a significant one.

4. Bush has actively sought, and has been largely successful, in undermining the many environmental protections implemented by the Clinton Administration. Over and over and over, and the documentation is quite clear, the Bush Administration, with Anne Veneman in the Ag dept and Gail Norton in the Interior, are actively and continually approving dubious projects, like clear cutting trees over the 30" limit in the Sierra, or approving new coal fired power plants in an era when we have realized the awful price associated with this sort of pollution. In fact, if you examine the environmental record, the Bush Administration has far outstripped even Reagan's rollbacks of environmental protections. It is appalling! George Bush is the enemy of environmental preservation. Since he is obviously nothing more than a mouth piece for the real 'thinkers' in the republican party, it is equally obvious that it is the republican party itself that is the enemy of preservation, their Big Tent (the Big Tent is on loan to the republicans by the way, it's owned by a conglomeration of oil companies) notwithstanding. As a direct result of these policies climbers will find it more expensive and more difficult to climb on public lands in the future. There is a direct link.

There you go, global and national politics that affect us climbers in visceral ways, deep pockets, climbing access, wars of conquest and sleeping at night.

Cheers
DMT

ha round 1000 of Republicans vs. environment....

Nice post. Too bad there isn't even one fact in it. :D By the way, did you write that yourself, or just borrow it from Michael Moore?

Curt

By the way, did you write that yourself, or just borrow it from Michael Moore?

Curt

Not a single fact in there? So it's not true that we invaded Iraq?

It's not true that Saudi Arabi contributed to September 11th, or that they're a repressive regime?

It's not true that Bush did not participate in Vietnam?

It's not true that there is a group of swift boat vets that are attacking Kerry's war record?

I'm not touching #4 'cause I don't read up on environmental issues too much. But finally, is it not true that all of the issues do effect climbers worldwide, just as they affect everyone else?

The "environmental protections" put in place by the Clinton administration that have been undone, are largely things Clinton put in place literally on his last day in office--and should have been undone.
Curt

Any truth to these? All from just one article.

-For the first time since the Clean Air Act was passed in 1970, water pollution levels are rising according to EPA.
-A Bush White House proposal would allow twice as much sulfur dioxide and three times more mercury emission than if the Clean Air Act were fully implemented.
-Auto fuel efficiency has dropped to its lowest level in 20 years under Bush policies encouraging consumers to buy SUV's.
- The Lake Erie dead zone is increasing for the first time in 30 years.
-Superfund cleanups have declined by 50 percent since Bush took office.
-Last year, EPA's two most senior enforcement officials resigned citing the Bush administration's refusal to enforce environmental laws.
-After taking office, the Bush administration ordered EPA to halt Clean Air Act investigations of animal factories and weaken water rules to allow them to continue to dump waste into streams and rivers.
-The Bush administration suppressed the EPA inspector general's finding of public health risks from poisoned air following 9/11.
- James Zahn, a scientist at Dept of Agriculture, resigned after Bush suppressed his study proving that billions of antibiotic resistant bacteria can be carried daily across property lines from meat factories into neighborhoods.
- the White House blocked EPA staff from publicly discussing perchlorate (rocket fuel) contamination, then froze federal regulations on perchlorate in spite of new research showing high levels in drinking water and food.
- Interior Secretary Gale Norton promised not to ideologically slant agency science. Her friend Tom Sansonetti, former coal industry lobbyist who is now assistant attorney general predicted: "There won't be any biologists or botanists to come in and pull the wool over her eyes."
- After providing the Senate Committee on Energy with Interior's scientific assessment that Arctic oil drilling would not harm herds of caribou, Fish and Wildlife Service biologists provided the data they had given to Norton to a watchdog agency. There were seventeen major changes, all of which minimized reported impacts. Norton called them typographical errors.
-White House political adviser Karl Rove forced National Marine Fisheries scientists to alter findings on the amount of water required for salmon to survive in the Klamath, to make sure large corporate farms got a bigger share of river water. Result: 33,000 chinook and coho salmon died, the largest fish kill in U.S. history.
-Mike Kelly, the biologist who drafted the original (suppressed) opinion has been awarded federal whistleblower status. He says coho are headed for extinction: "Morale is low among scientists here. We are under pressure to get the right results. The administration is putting species at risk for political gain--and not just in the Klamath."
-Norton ordered rewritten a 12-year study by federal biologists on effects of Arctic drilling on musk oxen and snow geese. She reissued the report two weeks later as a two page paper showing no negative impact to wildlife.
-Norton order the suppression of two studies by the Fish and Wildlife Service concluding that drilling would threaten polar bears and violate the international treaty protecting the bears. She instructed F&WS to redo the report to "reflect the Interior Department's position."
-Under Norton this is the first Fish and Wildlife Service that has not voluntarily listed a single species as endangered or threatened.

This is only a partial list, but if half of these accusations are true, it's a disaster for the environment. Definitely worth some thought and investigation.
JV

I fail to understand how any climber could even consider supporting Bush. I know the climbing community is a diverse one, and the people tend to get more conservative as they age.... But this guy is a royal gumby..... He has reversed or lessened most of the advances in environmental protection made by the Clinton administration. Not to mention that he is a dirty fighter Just stop and think about these swift water attack ads paid for by family friends….. This rectal orifice could not even tighten up his gonads enough to show up for air national guard duty. Not to mention the fact that he is a freaking idiot.

Rick